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11. The Nightingale Home

On a bluff overlooking Lake Pattison, this craftsman style house is elegant and simple with an open floor plan and lots of light. The unique "open-diffusion" wall system, super-efficient HVAC and warm wood interior create an extremely comfortable and healthy home. Breathe!

Built by Laupen Homes with the Smith Design Studio and Interior Dimensions

On a bluff overlooking Lake Pattison, this craftsman style house is elegant and simple with an open floor plan and lots of light. The unique "open-diffusion" wall system, super-efficient HVAC and warm wood interior create an extremely comfortable and healthy home. Breathe!

Nestled on a bluff overlooking Lake Pattison, this home’s design is both elegant and simple. A craftsman style exterior featuring a beamed front porch leads in to an open floor plan with an abundance of natural light and vaulted ceilings, make this home perfectly suited for the Northwest climate. Although open and airy, this home is energy-efficient due to the combination of building and design components. Its one-of-a-kind exterior wall system, a super-efficient heating and cooling system and collection of solar panels all work together to create an extremely comfortable interior environment that is healthy.

This house compliments and builds on the beauty that surrounds it with the use of natural finishes. Gleaming hardwood and rugged, authentic slate floors underfoot and vaulted ceilings above lead your eye to a spectacular view of Lake Pattison. Light oak cabinets, granite countertops and well-appointed lighting features please the senses. Also featured in the home are Douglas fir doors and trim and reclaimed old-growth cedar to accentuate the home’s natural look.

The home’s energy-efficiency is achieved by a combination of building components. A unique feature is the open-diffused wall system which seals the home making it air-tight, while allowing natural moisture, occurring in the wall when hot air meets cold air, to escape to the exterior. The 12-inch deep wall allows for an R-40 insulation value and a thermal break. These three components of air tightness, high insulation value, and thermal break, make the walls perform at a much higher efficiency level than those used in standard home construction. Combined with insulation values in the floor and ceiling that go well beyond code, this home will have very low heating and cooling needs.

The super efficiency of this home allows us to use a ductless heating system, the most effective heating system now being used in the Northwest. The ductless system, in combination with a heat-recovery ventilator that removes stale inside air and replaces it with fresh outside air without heat-loss, makes this home affordably warm in the winter, and comfortably cool in the summer. An added advantage of air exchange is that the home will be a healthier environment, not just for allergy sufferers, but for everyone, including the family pets! A solar hot water system will also be installed. Solar hot water is very effective and has a quick payoff in our Northwest climate. The home has also been pre wired and is ready for a solar electric system that will be installed in the future.

The homeowner had us add monitoring sensors to the electrical panel which allow him to keep track of power usage of all the individual circuits in the home. In this way he can tell how much of his overall power is going to heating and cooling of the home, and also the effectiveness of the solar hot water. All of this has sparked the interest of NEEA (Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance). They are considering using the home as a proto type for how homes in the Northwest should be built.